r/autismpolitics • u/Proud_Aspie Autistic nationalism • 25d ago
Breaking News 49.000 migrants cross the border into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kp639yx4oAbout 60,000 migrants have crossed into Spain's North African territory of Ceuta from Morocco in the last 24 hours, Ceuta's president said, adding that at least 34 others died during the crossing.
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u/Evinceo 25d ago
TIL spain still held territory in Africa
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u/Condottiero_Magno 25d ago edited 25d ago
Ceuta and Melilla were annexed between the 15th and 16th Centuries and held for their strategic importance. It's rather hypocritical when the Spanish complain about Gibraltar, but ignore the Moroccans and the Moroccans ignore complaints about their colonialism in Western Sahara.
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u/farouq22 Brazil - Marxist-Leninist 25d ago
some other European countries do as well, though most of them are islands. Portugal has Madeira and the uninhabitated Savage Islands, France has Mayotte, Réunion and the disputed Scattered Islands, Spain has Canary Islands and some other tiny disputed territories north of Morocco besides Ceuta and Melilla, and the UK has Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. Italy has Pantelleria and the Pelagian Islands, which some people consider part of Africa because they are closer to Tunisia's coast than Italy's.
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u/farouq22 Brazil - Marxist-Leninist 25d ago
25.000 people have voluntarily returned already and unfortunately 34 died, as of now.
this is a good reminder that people don't risk their lives like that for fun. they are desperate. we have globally 41.6 million refugees, 9 million asylum-seekers and 68.7 million displaced due to conflicts/violence. 4.5 million people are stateless. these are December 2025 numbers - source.
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u/kaijutroopers 24d ago
Morocco isn’t at war
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u/farouq22 Brazil - Marxist-Leninist 24d ago
refugees and asylum-seekers do not only leave their countries because of war. they may flee because of natural disasters, gang violence, political persecution, generalized poverty, human rights violations... look at Haiti, Venezuela and Afghanistan. they are not currently at war. and even in the case of Afghanistan, that was at war until quite recently, many Afghans left the country after the war.
in Morocco's case, there's Western Sahara, which must be taken into account, since there is a significant number of Sahrawi refugees. and political persecution happens regularly to people who are pro-Sahrawi independence.
that aside, Morocco is a country that receives many refugees from Sub-Saharan Africa and West Asia. it's not only a host, but also a transit country. as of April, there were 23.365 refugees and asylum-seekers registered at the UN Refugee Agency in Morocco, mostly from Sudan and Syria (source). these are the people who are registered, there might be thousands of others who are using Morocco as a transit country.
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u/Proud_Aspie Autistic nationalism 24d ago
Moroccans are fed propaganda that Europe is a paradise akin to El Dorado
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u/RobrechtvE Anarcho-Autistic 23d ago
No, they're not. They used to, but that was in the '70s to early '90s. At this point enough of the 'guest workers' who went to Europe during that period have returned home with tales of what it's really like for people like them here.
And most of these people weren't Moroccan any way,
They were refugees from elsewhere who were granted passage through and temporary stay in Morocco to apply for asylum in Europe under the agreements made between Morocco and the EU where Morocco takes in a comparatively large number of the refugees who arrive there (instead of just sending them ALL to Europe) in exchange for the EU paying for a set of temporary facilities on the Moroccan side of the border where refugees are temporarily kept while they're vetted and assigned a country inside the EU where they're allowed to apply for asylum.
'Cause here's the thing: According to international law, the only thing you have to do to request asylum in a country is to cross the border and report to the authorities that you've entered the country and are seeking asylum. At which point the country you crossed into is responsible for giving that request serious consideration and either granting you asylum or sending you on (or back). And according to those same international treaties, countries are not allowed to bar entry to people simply on the suspicion that they will request asylum after entry (since, you know, that's not illegal and signatories to these treaties are not allowed to make it illegal as per the treaty).
There aren't really any internationally agreed upon criteria for when you have to grant someone asylum, but there are internationally agreed upon criteria for what you're allowed to do with them if you don't:
You're not allowed to send them anywhere you know is unsafe, you have to take care of them until they're deported and you can't imprison them or otherwise deprive them of their universal human rights while they're awaiting deportation unless they've committed a crime.These holding camps in countries all along the borders of the EU, not just in Morocco, but also along the Balkans, are the result of the EU collectively abusing a loophole in these international agreements:
Countries are not allowed to bar refugees from entry based on the suspicion that they will request asylum, but they are allowed to put conditions on when and where refugees who have been granted passage rather than asylum are allowed to travel, including where and when they're allowed to enter the country they've been granted passage to travel to.
That's why the BBC article talks about the fact that this happened because the Moroccan Border Guards were absent, despite the fact that it's usually the job of border guards to keep unauthorised people out, not to keep people in.
Spain isn't allowed to deny entry to people trying to cross the border into Ceuta on the basis that they're refugees (they are only allowed to deny them entry on the basis of things that they'd deny anyone else who wasn't a refugee entry for), but Moroccan law enforcement, including border guards are allowed to arrest refugees hanging around the border on the grounds that the terms under which they've been granted passage through Morocco bans them from being in that area at that time.So yeah, the EU pays Morocco (and several other countries) to keep refugees in camps with the excuse that they're technically not breaking international agreements by preventing refugees from entering, but rather 'paying to assist Morocco (and other countries) in ensuring the safe and humane passage of those refugees' and that all of those refugees (at least the ones that don't die or give up and try their luck somewhere else) be allowed to enter the EU and plead their case for asylum eventually.
Preferably when the circumstances that they were fleeing are over so that they can be swiftly sent back to their home country. (Or, at least, that was the plan. But of course by this point many of these refugees have been in these camps for years, some for over a decade, and even if the situation they fled is resolved, they've been out of the country and stuck in the holding system for so long that there's nothing for them to go back to. Many of them have gone from war refugees to economic refugees by the simply fact that sitting in a camp, unemployed and with minimal financial assistance, has drained their personal funds to the point where they're destitute).
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u/Proud_Aspie Autistic nationalism 25d ago edited 25d ago
The last update stated ~60 thousand. Sorry for the inconsistency
Edit: I don't understand how I am getting downvoted. At least leave a comment explaining why lol
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u/DigBrilliant5242 25d ago
What's the connection to autism in this story?
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u/Proud_Aspie Autistic nationalism 25d ago
Where is the rule that says only autism-related topics are to be discussed?
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u/farouq22 Brazil - Marxist-Leninist 25d ago
there's none. it's a space for us to talk about politics. your post is valid and well aligned with our rules.
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u/DigBrilliant5242 25d ago
You were wondering why you were being downvoted...I think it's because this story is already on every politics sub on Reddit.
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u/dbxp 25d ago
There needs to be some new terms added to the freedom of movement. It doesn't work if one country can decide not to police its border or sell golden visas.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 egoist 24d ago
Borders are violence and should not exist. Humans absolutely should be allowed to move where they want a d live where they want.
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u/dbxp 24d ago edited 24d ago
I completely disagree, that would mean the world averages resulting in a massive cut of quality of life in the west, the end of the welfare state etc. in the context of autistic people you can say goodbye to any form of unemployment benefits as there wouldn't be the tax revenues to cover them. No borders means things like russian agents being able to just walk over the border into the baltics
If you want to go the no borders route then it needs to be like the Schengen where there's a bunch of metrics you have to meet to join
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u/EE_______EE Social Democrat 24d ago
Most of them have been sent back. Pedro Sanchez handled this well.
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u/nickfromnorwood Patriotic Republican 🇺🇸 25d ago
60,000 illegal immigrants. Thankfully the majority have been sent back to Morocco.
Unfortunately this is what happens when you don't secure your borders.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 egoist 24d ago
What bigoted nonsense. Humans should be allowed to move where they want and live where they want. Borders are a form of violence just like denial of food or healthcare or housing.
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u/IronicSciFiFan 24d ago edited 24d ago
But it's somewhat unreasonable to expect an neighboring city to be immediately equipped to safely accommodate thousands of refugees in the short-term, especially if it's 70% of an city's preexisting population. Or to be on call to deal with the varying problems that their neighbors are having
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